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I've read the complete series three times. It is absolutely magnificent. Book eight is indeed weak. And Wingrove is not to blamed for that. The publisher f*cked up.
The first release looked like this:
The Middle Kingdom (1989)
The Broken Wheel (1990)
The White Mountain (1992)
The Stone Within (1993)
Beneath the Tree of Heaven (1994)
White Moon, Red Dragon (1994)
Days of Bitter Strength (1997)
The Marriage of the Living Dark (1999)
The rerelease will look like this (source wikipedia):
In February 2011 Corvus / Atlantic Books will begin an ambitious re-release of the entire Chung Kuo saga, recasting it as twenty books with approximately 500,000 words of new material. This includes two brand new prequel novels, Son of Heaven and Daylight on Iron Mountain and a significant restructuring of the end of the series to reflect Wingrove's original intentions. The two prequels will cover events between 2045 and 2100 AD, telling the story of China's rise to power.
Son of Heaven
Daylight on Iron Mountain
The Middle Kingdom
Ice and Fire
The Art of War
An Inch of Ashes
The Broken Wheel
The White Mountain
Monsters of the Deep
The Stone Within
Upon a Wheel of Fire
Beneath the Tree of Heaven
Song of the Bronze Statue
White Moon Red Dragon
China on the Rhine
Days of Bitter Strength
The Father of Lies
Blood and Iron
King of Infinite Space
The Marriage of the Living Dark
I think this deserves much more attention than it gets. Personally I can not think of anything in science fiction that pleases me more than this. With the release of the prequels (written by wingrove himself) and the rewriting and restructuring of the final books I believe this series is one of the holy grails in scifi.
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